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Posted: October 4
(Casamari) 2006 seems to be my year for spending time in monastaries. A few weeks ago it was the Benedictines in Engleberg, Switzerland, where I made my own annual retreat. Last week it was the Cistercians in Casamari, a rural area in the hills an hour and a half or so south of Rome. The second monastery was by far the older of the two, but I cannot report much about its history because my days there were too busy directing six seminarians from the North American College. Three of us Jesuits guided 18 young men through an Ignatian directed retreat in preparation for their being ordained deacons this week. I was spending almost six hours a day talking with individuals, since this kind of retreat depends on what happens to each man in prayer. Although my six men all started with the same meditation, they quickly followed individual paths as they responded to the Spirit's prompting. A director has a very privileged, front-row seat to watch God at work inviting men to come closer. It's a very effective kind of retreat, but labor intensive. I cannot afford to do it too often, but it is a gift to accompany and gently guide others on their way to the Lord.
The only downside was that I spent a week in one of the outstanding old monasteries in this area and saw very little of it. The church itself was usually closed when I got a break, but I finally got in one afternoon. What a marvel of clean Gothic lines (and a nice relief from all the Baroque architecture of Rome.) The walls are simple, unadorned stone, with the decorative marble reserved for the sanctuary itself. The windows are alabaster, a translucent stone that has patterns like wood and yields a soft yellow glow on the spare stone walls. Very prayerful. The monks there, who are relatively sociable compared to their cousins, the Trappists, run a small farm within the monastery walls. They grow the grapes that made the wine we drank, cultivate the vegetables we ate and raise cows, chickens and sheep that provided food for thought for some of the seminarians who come from cities and were enthralled to watch the rhythm of daily life on a farm.
The monks are modernizing their home by adding an elevator attached to the outside of the building. They could probably not do otherwise given the solid walls of the ancient construction. Several times as I passed by the work, I noticed a workman sitting on the ground pounding on a a new stone for the base of the elevator. And that is all he did: pound, pound, pound for hours. Finally one of the retreatants explained the mystery to me. He was pounding dents into the surface of the new, smooth stone so that it would match the texture of the old stone weathered over centuries. Such attention to detail and craftsmanship is typical of Italy. I could only think, though, that in America we would probably want to bring sanding machines in to smooth out the old stone and make it all look new. This is one case where the Italians got it right.
Just outside the walls, though, was the most fascinating thing. In the dirt parking lot opposite the side gate of the monastery a crew of roustabouts was putting up a traveling carnival show, with rides, merry-go-round, bright lights and loud music. I know the last item because they were testing it one afternoon and made me fear that we would loose the rural peacefullness that was so important to a retreat. Fortunately the celebrations did not start until Saturday night, after we had just returned home. The parish there was celebrating Our Lady of the Rosary, and the carnival was part of the celebration. It looked like a scene out of a Federico Fellini movie. Anthony Quinn as Zampano would have fit right in. But this was not fiction, just modern life in rural Italy.
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